Editor's picks from around the Web (2/18-2/22)

By Paul Wilson

ProducersWEB

This week's picks features GOP's gradual acceptance of Obamacare, unclaimed property tips for consumers, the financial struggles of the transgender community, the debate over gun insurance and lessons that can be learned from Lance Armstrong and the country of Rwanda.

"Columbine survivor Patrick Ireland, immortalized as “The Boy in the Window,” has overcome the tragedy to achieve great success in life, including as managing director for a Northwestern Mutual office in Colorado."

"Over the last decade in Rwanda, deaths from HIV, TB, and malaria dropped by 80 percent, maternal mortality dropped by 60 percent, life expectancy doubled -- all at an average health care cost of $55 per person per year."

"It seems, these days, that we can barely keep pace with the tales of the famous and near famous who climb to great heights, plummet to great depths and then try to work their way back into the public’s affection ... These never-ending stories may not affect our lives — except, perhaps, to make us more cynical when the mighty fall. But they do raise questions about forgiveness and atonement that are important outside the world of the celebrity. "

Both sides in a nation sharply divided over guns seem to agree on at least one thing: a bigger role for the insurance industry in a heavily armed society. But just what that role should be, and whether insurers will choose to accept it, are much in dispute.

"The about-face by [Florida Gov. Rick Scott], the seventh Republican governor to accept Obama’s expansion of government-funded health care for the poor, is a crucial validation of the president’s signature initiative. In his announcement, Scott made a moral case for the Medicaid expansion as compelling as the law’s proponents ever made."